Chapter 97: Price of Prestige
Samar's post on the forums had blown up in the past few hours. It had millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes. The number of comments under it had not stopped increasing since it was posted.
This single post had turned the Panjal City into a focal point of attention and set the towns under it abuzz. The Auction Houses in and around Panjal City had become crowded despite their humongous sizes.
A simple system auction had snowballed and became a grand event all the guilds wanted to become part of!
It did not matter whether a guild was ranked or unranked, affiliated or unaffiliated; all of them filled the Auction offerings with a variety of rare and precious goods.
The few Ranking Guilds sold the goods because they had a hope of acquiring the Shadow Seamstress. Rest of the Guilds simply took advantage of the gathering of big shots with flush pockets to sell off the junk they could not use.
At 5:30 pm, the Auction House replenished their offerings.
Red Dart of the New Moon Legion checked the offerings as usual to see if she could find anything of value when her eyes fell on them; the two Shadow Weavers Samar had consigned.
She immediately opened their information panel.
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Shadow Weaver
Growth Rating: Normal (57)
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Shadow Weaver
Growth Rating: Normal (80)
—-
The GR of the first Shadow Weaver was slightly above average, nothing shocking. But when Red Dart saw the GR of second Shadow Weaver, she rubbed her eyes and blinked them twice.
"80 points in Growth Rating!" She could not believe her eyes.
Like many other Guild representatives in the Auction House, she knew that the Shadow Seamstresses had nothing to do with them. They were only here to snatch some items that the top dogs showed no interest in.
One of the examples of such items were the Normal Grade Shadow Weavers. The Executives of the Ranked Guilds disliked the Shadow Weaver with just 57 GR. The same was not the case with the 80 GR Shadow Weaver.
Even if it was an ordinary monster, 80 points in GR were enough to tempt the R3s and R4s of the Ranked Guilds to take action because the stats of a Normal Grade monster with 80 GR were better than the stats of an Elite Grade Monster with 70 GR!
The unranked guilds thus stayed clear of it and started a fierce bidding war for 57 GR Shadow Weaver. Within a few minutes, its starting price of 30 silver had already increased 10 times, reaching 300 silver.
This price was many times higher than what anyone would pay for a Normal grade pet with above average GR. Still, the bidding only slowed down, and did not stop entirely.
"The Epitaph bids 310 silver." The person from Epitaph, an unranked Guild, announced, gritting his teeth and added his bid to the system.
Pets were not only an incredible addition to combat power, they were also a symbol of status and prestige.
Even if the Shadow Weaver with 57 GR could not provide a significant boost to a player's combat power, winning it in the presence of so many players would boost a Guild's prestige.
The unranked guilds already found it hard to compete with the Ranked Guilds to get the allegiance of players; So they could not miss this prepared stage, watched by half a million players, to spread their name even if it cost them an arm and a leg.
These guilds knew that the players would only remember the guilds who could bid even after the price had reached the sky. So, they did everything possible to gather funds.
Just as these unranked guilds were scrambling to gather funds, Red Dart looked at the bids on the 80 GR Weaver. No one had bid on it even after five minutes had passed after the auction started.
She looked at the representatives of the Ranked Guilds and saw them standing coolly to the side, as if they had no intentions to participate in the bidding for Shadow Weavers.
Red Dart gathered courage and increased the bid on 80 GR Weaver from 40 Silver to 50 Silver. Her actions did not go unnoticed and an uproar started in the Auction House.
"Has the New Moon Legion gone blind with greed? How dare they snatch food from the tiger's mouth?"
"They are affiliated to the Howling Moon. Maybe that gave her the guts to act like that?"
"So, what if they have the backing of the Howling Moon? Will a Guild ranked 543rd offend all the other Ranked Guilds present to save New Moon Legion?"
"If the Ranked Guilds wanted it, they should've made a move. Why is the New Moon Legion at fault here?"
"Red Dart must be tired of living. Just because no one from the ranked Guild had not bid, does not mean she can take what they have their eyes on!"
The independent players who had just gathered to watch the show in Panjal City Auction house, talked amongst themselves. The other unranked guilds also turned their attention to the executives of the Ranked Guilds, waiting to see how they would react.
Minutes passed but the members of Ranked Guilds showed no intention of putting Red Dart in place. They also did not bid on the 80GR Shadow Weaver, as if it did not interest them at all!
Emboldened by the inaction of the Ranked Guilds to Red Dart's bid, the other unranked guilds also joined the bidding on 80 GR Shadow Weaver. The bidding was so fierce that the bid numbers on the display changed every second!
"95 Silver!"
"1 Gold 50 Silver!"
"2 Gold 60 Silver!"
.
.
.
Just like that, the bid of 80GR Shadow Weaver reached Ten Gold Coins!
While the 57 GR Shadow Weaver was merely a pet of prestige, a Shadow Weaver with 80 GR could also provide a significant amount of combat power to the Players.
This made all the guilds loosen their purses, even if it meant buying coins from the market at exorbitant rates!
The bids did not stop even as the auction time of 30 minutes neared its end. In fact they grew even fiercer in the last 60 seconds.
Green Horn and the two others from Scarlet Heart watched the guilds jump over each other to get the 80GR Shadow Weaver.
The Ranger accompanying Green Horn was so tempted by the 80 GR Shadow Weaver that he could not sit still.
"Green Horn, are we really not going to bid and let the precious pet fall into the hands of those Unranked Guilds?"
The Deimos' Dreadful looked at the executives of the other ranked guilds standing around them stoically and whispered, "No, we are not. Our goal is the Shadow Seamstress."
Then he looked at the unbelievably high price of the Shadow Weavers and said, "Keep an eye on the guilds that lose; we can 'borrow' funds from them later."
The countdown for the last 10 seconds ended and the auction of the Two Shadow Weavers came to a close.
A few minutes later, Samar, who was in Elara's shop, received two consecutive notifications.
[Congratulations! Your consigned pet beast, Shadow Weaver has been sold successfully.]
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone